Small Canon Search™

137. The second Memorable Relation: While I was meditating on conjugial love, lo, afar off were seen two naked infants with baskets in their hands and turtle-doves flying around them. When they were nearer, they seemed like naked infants becomingly adorned with garlands of flowers, their heads adorned with chaplets of flowers, and their breasts with garlands of lilies and of roses of a hyacinthine color hanging obliquely from their shoulders to their loins. Around the two and uniting them, as it were, was a common bond, woven of little leaves with olives interspersed. When they came yet nearer, however, they appeared, not as infants, nor naked, but as two persons in the first flower of their age, clad in robes and tunics of shining silk on which were woven flowers of a most beautiful appearance; and when they were beside me, there breathed through them out of heaven a vernal warmth, with a sweet-smelling odor as of the earliest blossomings in gardens and fields. They were two married partners from heaven. They then spoke to me, and because what I had just seen was in my thought, they asked me, "What have you seen?" [2] When I told them that they had first appeared to me as naked infants, then as infants adorned with garlands, and at last as adults clothed in garments embroidered with flowers, and that then forthwith an odor of spring breathed upon me with all its delights, they smiled pleasantly and said, that on their way, they had not seemed to themselves as infants, nor naked, nor with garlands, but continually the same in appearance as now. What at a distance had been thus represented was their conjugial love--its state of innocence by their appearing as naked infants, its delights by garlands of flowers, and the same now by the flowers woven in their robes and tunics. "And because you said that as we approached, a vernal warmth breathed upon you with its pleasant odors as though from a garden, we will tell you the cause of this." [3] They then said: "We have been partners now for ages, and continually in the flower of age in which you now see us. Our first state was like the state of a virgin and a young man when they first consociate in marriage; and we then believed that that state was the very blessedness of our life. But we heard from others in our heaven, and afterwards we ourselves perceived, that that state was a state of heat not tempered with light, and that it is tempered according as the husband is perfected in wisdom and the wife loves that wisdom in her husband; also that this is effected by and according to the uses which each of them with mutual aid performs in society; and that delights follow in accordance with the tempering of heat and light, that is, of wisdom and its love. [4] A warmth as of spring breathed upon you as we approached because in our heaven conjugial love and vernal heat act as one; for with us, heat is love and the light with which heat is united is wisdom; and use is as the atmosphere which contains both of them in its bosom. What are heat and light without their containant? and so, what are love and wisdom without their use? There is no conjugial in them, for there is no subject wherein to contain them. In heaven, wherever the heat is vernal, there is love truly conjugial; and it is there because nothing vernal is possible save where heat is united with light in equal measure, that is, where there is as much of heat as of light, and the reverse. Moreover, we affirm that, as heat delights itself with light and light in turn with heat, so love delights itself with wisdom and wisdom in turn with love." [5] He said further: "With us in heaven there is perpetual light and never any shade of evening, still less darkness; for our sun does not set and rise as does yours, but remains continually midway between the upper pole of the sky and the horizon, which, according to your manner of speech, is in the sky at an angle of forty-five degrees. Therefore, the heat and light proceeding from our sun make perpetual spring and cause something perpetually vernal to breathe upon those with whom love is united with wisdom in equal measure. By the eternal union of heat and light, our Lord breathes forth nothing but uses. From this, moreover, come the germinations on your earth in the spring-time, and the matings of your birds and animals; for the vernal heat opens their interiors even to the inmost things thereof which are called their souls. These it affects; and it imparts to them its own conjugial, causing what is prolific in them to come into its delights, and this from a continual striving to produce the fruits of use, the use being the propagation of their kind. [6] But with men, the influx of vernal heat from the Lord is perpetual, and therefore they can enjoy delights in marriage at any time, even in midwinter; for men were created to receive from the Lord light, that is, wisdom, and women were created to receive from the Lord heat, that is, the love of the wisdom of the man. This then is the reason why, as we approached, a vernal warmth breathed on you, with a sweet-smelling odor as of the early blossomings in gardens and fields." [7] Having thus spoken, the man gave me his right hand and led me to homes where were partners in the same flower of age as themselves. He then said: "In the world, these wives whom you now see as maidens were old women; and their husbands, now seen as young men, were infirm and old. They have all been restored by the Lord to this flower of age because they mutually loved each other and from religion shunned adulteries as enormous sins." He said further: "No one knows the blessed delights of conjugial love save he who rejects the horrid delights of adultery; and no one can reject these save he who is wise from the Lord; and no one is wise from the Lord unless he performs uses from the love of uses." Moreover, I then saw their household utensils. They were all in heavenly forms; and from the gold, they were glittering as though in flames from the rubies with which they were studded.